As I detailed in the diary I wrote earlier this week, my family and I have had a very difficult year--from deaths of close relatives including my brother, a sister who has been hospitalized twice and is now battling cancer, my own recovery from a broken ankle and later, a car accident when I was hit by a drunk driver and required extensive physical therapy to partially recover from.
As many of you know, I also have an adult daughter who is severely autistic, nonverbal, and who functions at the level of a three-year-old. Thankfully, we are set up with a Medicaid waiver program that pays us for up to 30 hours per week for providing her care. But since my sister is very ill, and undergoing treatment for cancer, I have not been able to work as many of these caregiving hours, resulting in a large loss of income for my household, since I have had to help her during this time. (Read more about her situation, and all the issues I have dealt with during the last year here.)
Unfortunately, I am the only person in the family who can/will/has the medical training to help my sister--but it is dragging me down financially, and I am not going to be able to support my daughter, while dealing with all of these other expenses and loss of income as well. I have exhausted all other resources for coming up with the money for us to survive while all of this is going on--I also had expenses related to my brother's funeral, plus a loss of income and medical bills after my broken ankle and car accident over the last year.
Meanwhile, my daughter still needs to be cared and provided for, since she requires 24/7 supervision. I work with her on improving her ability to communicate with others since she is nonverbal. I also work with her on learning to perform at least some self-care in order to help her be as independent as possible, so she can at least do a little for herself. In addition to providing for her physical needs she is dependent on me financially. My oldest daughter has been helping watch her while I am at my day job, but because of the way the Medicaid waiver is set up, we can only legally be paid if I am the one who actually performs the work.
I am going to have to try to raise enough money to sustain us while we work our way through the next several months. I have estimated that the loss of income, current bills I am behind on, plus added expenses are going to cost around $15000 over the next six months or so.
I have set up a GoFundMe in order to help raise the money we need so we can make it through this crisis. I also have a paypal for those who prefer to send it this way. If anyone wants to send anything by snail mail, please send me a Kosmail and I will provide my mailing address.
GoFundMe:
Paypal:
tonyahky at gmx dot com
Another way to help is to share this diary with your DK groups, or share the GoFundMe on your social media sites such as Facebook, Bluesky, or Twitter, etc.
I truly appreciate any and all help we can get with this situation. 2025 truly was the worst year of my life.
So far, $2190 has been raised. Thank you Daily Kos Community for helping me take care of my family during this ordeal.
